Re: Is UKTS Down

rufuskins Tue 11 Aug 2020, 9:39 am

I can access UKTS except forums which gives the following report:-

Your connection is not fully secure
This site uses an outdated security configuration, which may expose your information (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards) when it is sent to this site.
NET::ERR_SSL_OBSOLETE_VERSION

Kaspersky tells me that I could get access by adding this to exclusions! As its not critical for me I haven't.

**slipperman12** Tue 11 Aug 2020, 10:45 am

Hi Alec,
If you get that message, you're lucky!!
With Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, when attempting to access the Forum, I get the message "This page isn't working" (or similar) with error code 500. With Mozilla Firefox, I just get a completely blank screen.

Cheers,
Ged

dforrest Tue 11 Aug 2020, 11:33 am

What also concerns me very much is that they are not advising us users of what the problem is and what will be done about it , and when. Surely this information can be posted on the "Current News" page on the UKTS home page.

**slipperman12** Tue 11 Aug 2020, 2:19 pm

Hi,
I certainly agree with you, David. It's three weeks since that message was posted but I'm sure it wouldn't have been impossible to post an update!
Having said that, Brian's (ShortNorth) post of yesterday gives a very plausible reason for the problem. As Microsoft progresses (?enhances?) Windows 10, this sort of situation is likely to increase until, Heaven forbid, even MSTS will fail to work!!

Here's hoping for a satisfactory outcome before very long!

Cheers,
Ged

rufuskins Tue 11 Aug 2020, 3:46 pm

This time I got the above message when attempting to access UKTS! Do we know whether in the longer term TSSH might be susceptible to potential MS upgrades? I'm sticking with Windows 7 and when my current set-up fails I'm unlikely to go any further!

**slipperman12** Tue 11 Aug 2020, 4:23 pm

Hi Alec,
It's nothing to do with the individual users use of Win 10, but with the software used by the website providers!

My PC can dual boot into Win 7 or Win 10 (Win 7 has no internet access) but I rarely use Win 7 these days! Win 10 does take a little getting used to, but there are very, very few difficulties running MSTS and its associated utilities. You only have to follow a few simple rules, which also apply when running under Win 7!

ShortNorth Thu 13 Aug 2020, 5:06 am

Just as a follow-up to my previous post - the RailPage Australia Forum is now back as per normal. The problem has been fixed - I don't know how different the forum software for RailPage is to that of UKTS, so I don't know if UKTS can be fixed by using the same technique.

**j3801** Thu 13 Aug 2020, 1:16 pm

Hi Guys,

I know that some of you have been worried about the future of this forum, in regards to the problems that have been happening with UKTS.

The main difference is that this forum is not hosted by me or in the way that UKTS is set up.
It is hosted by a business that is set up to provide forums for people and their systems are regularly updated and new features get added fairly often.
So things are kept fairly up-to-date service wise.

Same goes for the file hosting site, it is hosted by a company that provides corporate and personal websites and its servers are updated regularly.
The only thing that is "outdated" on the file hosting site is the base theme that I used to create the website is no longer part of their "current" design collection,
They still support it as it is basically part of the site, but theoretically I couldn't set up another site using its base design, even though the site no longer looks like how it was originally intended to be.

Though I can't say that things won't fall apart in the distant future, I'd safely say (famous last words) that we are safe for a good 20 years or so....

Regards,
Justin

dforrest Thu 13 Aug 2020, 1:38 pm

What concerns me most with the situation with the forums on UKTS, is that UKTS management will not make a statement on what the position is with these.

Easilyconfused Thu 13 Aug 2020, 3:09 pm

I have now received an apology from the individual concerned regarding the abusive email I received on my domestic email (not via this forum PM system) who seemed to take exception to me posting updates here but not at certain other sites which I have long standing but dormant accounts on. I don't expect to win popularity contests given I have been involved in banning members over the years but the tone and content of that email were a new low point. I did receive a couple of emails to my UKTS email urging me to not do anything hasty and slept on it for a week or two.

So the current position with regard to UKTS is :

**slipperman12** Thu 13 Aug 2020, 6:27 pm

Hi,
I don't know what you did, John, but well done!!
At 18:25 I was able to log into the UKTS Forums, but I'm not counting my chickens, just yet!!

Cheers,
Ged

dforrest Thu 13 Aug 2020, 6:37 pm

slipperman12 wrote:Hi,
I don't know what you did, John, but well done!!
At 18:25 I was able to log into the UKTS Forums, but I'm not counting my chickens, just yet!!

Cheers,
Ged

I also can access the UKTS forums.

Easilyconfused Thu 13 Aug 2020, 7:11 pm

It wasn't me!

I can only assume Matt found a little time to temporarily fix the HTTP 500 error. I doubt it is permanent since he told me a fairly big software upgrade was required.

Easilyconfused Thu 13 Aug 2020, 10:28 pm

The server appears to be rebooting at the moment. Not sure how long this is going to take. Talking to Matt tonight he does have time booked off soon to move the server to new more reliable hardware and upgrade the software.

**Markh5682** Thu 13 Aug 2020, 11:02 pm

Sounds like good news.

SD40-2 Fri 14 Aug 2020, 6:14 pm

At around 10:46 AM US CST, UKTS went down again. Hopefully the server upgrades are being put in place as of now.

Easilyconfused Fri 14 Aug 2020, 7:14 pm

The server rebooted again. It is really showing it's age now.

The upgrades are scheduled for later in August post the launch of TSW 2.

Bob Latimer Thu 20 Aug 2020, 1:49 am

Looks like UKTS is totally down this time - both main page and forums.

Bob Latimer Thu 20 Aug 2020, 2:56 am

And they're back up again!

Bob Latimer Thu 20 Aug 2020, 4:27 am

And down again.

marcus1940 Mon 28 Sep 2020, 6:35 pm

For the last two days I have been unable to connect to UKTrainSim, I keep getting the following :-

"www.uktrainsim.com refused to connect.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED"

I have tried both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer but get the same on both.

Has anyone else had the problem and if not anyone know what I can do to try and rectify this????

I know that the site is being upgraded and wonder if this is the cause.
Any help would be appreciated

Mike
New Zealand

RIGFindlay Mon 28 Sep 2020, 6:43 pm

Same here. I believe the site is being worked on in the evenings to get it up to scratch with a new server.

Roderic

marcus1940 Mon 28 Sep 2020, 6:50 pm

Thanks Roderic for that quick response.

Of course my problem is that night time UK is our Daytime here in NZ !!!!

I will have access at a different time or wait for the upgrade to be finished

Regards

Mike
NZ

dforrest Mon 28 Sep 2020, 7:19 pm

It is the same for me. It appears to be off for the full day, nothing different between day and night.

Has anyone any more information of this?

Easilyconfused Mon 28 Sep 2020, 9:23 pm

The final migration is in progress and the export / import took a long time despite being watched until 4:00am this morning. Testers were on standby until the early hours but it became clear it was not going to finish last night. This is what Matt had to say on the matter earlier:

Hi Folks

UKTS, as you're no doubt aware, is currently down. I'm mid-way through migrating the data to the new machine (it takes a good 20 or so hours for the export-copy-import process) - aiming for that to be finished any time now and then after work tonight i'm going to start re-pointing DNS and hopefully it'll be live in its new home.

For those expecting a revolution in look and feel, please don't, it will be identical in just about every respect.

I have improved the uploader so it now has super advanced modern features like "progress bar" (woooo!) but by and large the site is identical.

First step is to get it all up and running, then I will get SSL enabled (which will be proper modern SSL and will finally eliminate the SSL warnings you're all getting), and then we can see what to do next.

I have doubled the non premium download queue size, and doubled the concurrent bandwidth on the downloader too, and obviously for premium users it remains full speed, supporting resume and multi-channel downloads.

Once the site is fully operational I'm sure Dad will make an official post announcing such, but I wanted to give you all a heads up and thank you all for your support and patience. Nearly there.

Yes, the site needs a major visual overhaul - it's needed it for about 10 years, but i've just not had the time, UKTS is a massive site and probably a good 2-3 months work to rebuild in new tech (I hadn't fully remembered how much there was until I upgraded it all to support PHP 7 this weekend, there's all kinds of features in there away from the basic obvious stuff).

The Queue is unlikely to ever be removed, I want to make sure there is a clear distinction and thank you to those who support the site financially vs those who are unable or unwilling to do so - it's completely fine, and no file will ever be locked behind a pay-barrier, every file is freely available, premium just makes it go faster, but the site exists purely because of those who pay to support the site or those who upload their work, without either of those, the free access is irrelevant because there is no site.

Anyway, from here in the technical back-end of the server I just wanted to give you all a quick update

**slipperman12** Mon 28 Sep 2020, 9:37 pm

Hi John,
Many thanks for the update - I think we all feel a little 'lost' without UKTS!!

Cheers,
Ged

glasgowworks Tue 29 Sep 2020, 5:22 pm

slipperman12 wrote:Hi John,
Many thanks for the update - I think we all feel a little 'lost' without UKTS!!

Cheers,
Ged

I agree with you, Ged. To be fair, life isn't the same without UKTS. This has
resulted in having to post screenshots and upload content somewhere's else.

Just need to bear for a little longer.

Alistair Cowell

Easilyconfused Tue 29 Sep 2020, 7:46 pm

The current position is that the main site and forums are up without SSL. Downloads and uploads work.

Matt and myself finally called it a night at 1:00am this morning with a list of things needing fixing. Since then more have come to light. That was after being up to 2:00am for me on Monday morning (Matt was even later).

The fix list currently is

1. Atomic Album not working.
2. Forum post formatting throwing errors and ultimately not working.
3. We don't think email confirmations of postings and other things are working.
4. Some of the ancillaries such as premium extension appear not to be working correctly last night but DNS was still replicating at the time.

Once the Dovetail stream is done I will be back testing more stuff. Anyone who finds an oddity please drop me a line and I can get it added to the list of things to investigate.

Jonathan David Tue 29 Sep 2020, 8:01 pm

Still getting the same message:
This site can’t be reachedwww.uktrainsim.com refused to connect.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
Jonathan

Easilyconfused Tue 29 Sep 2020, 9:38 pm

Hmm. Are you using the http://www.uktrainsim.com link ?

If you can you ping www.uktrainsim.com and advise what IP it resolves to please?

Jonathan David Wed 30 Sep 2020, 3:30 pm

Ah. I have long had UKTS as a favourite on the Bookmarks bar. That doesn't work now but copying the url in your message does - except that the Home page is blank below the eight buttons and there are no download images above them.
But any of the option buttons then work.
I then updated my Bookmark but it still idn't work. Very odd.
The message is
This site can’t be reachedwww.uktrainsim.com refused to connect.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

So deleted the bookmark and created it again copied from your message. Now I am getting the home page but as above, and the Bookmark works.

I am using Google Chrome by the way, in case it makes any difference.
Jonathan

Easilyconfused Wed 30 Sep 2020, 10:25 pm

I get that currently too. If you then logon the news and all the download pictures appear.

Matt worked the entire weekend on the servers and we have had 2 very late nights testing stuff and fixing it before grabbing a few hours sleep and going back to our day jobs. I almost fell asleep in a conference call this afternoon since it was pretty dry stuff and I was just so tired.

Not sure what is currently being worked on from the bug list but the behaviour you have seen with the mostly blank page is known and on the list.

Jonathan David Thu 01 Oct 2020, 8:23 am

Home page now fine.
Many thanks for all your hard work. I must get round to renewing my subscription which lapsed ages ago.
Time for a holiday for you two, methinks, preferably somewhere completely deserted but with better weather than we have currently.
Jonathan

Easilyconfused Thu 01 Oct 2020, 11:05 pm

Things are still progressing. For those who have not seen the latest update from Matt at 3:15am this morning here is is.

I've given up trying to make this version of the forum software work with the new server - it's just too old and while it kinda 95% works, the 5% that's left are key things like bbcode - and they are going to be a major rewrite to upgrade them as they intrinsically rely on old behaviours no longer supported on the newer core software.

I've started preparing an up to date forum install using the latest version but I need to get all the UKTS integrations rewritten for that and then I can migrate the database over to it, that should cure all the forum issues.

I've also got the server upgraded for SSL/HTTPS now so uktrainsim.com is operational with top-grade security now (even shows me a padlock!) so once the forum is upgraded and operational I'll drop in the necessary to get the forum equally secured up. Make sure when you go to the site you actually type in "https://www.uktrainsim.com" as likely your browser will have remembered that you've been using http:// and you'll still see the "not secure" warning in the top left. Re-type it in fully and you'll be good.

and just to confirm one more time - the forum is NOT yet on https, that remains on http until I get the new software working over the next day or so.

I fixed the issue of the semi-blank screen when you first go to the main address too, that was just me being dumb.

Matt.

I am receiving PMs sent to me but I can't reply to them which has been noted in the bug list. However, given what Matt said above I would not expect that to be resolved until he rolls in the new version of the forum software. I would also like to highlight a response in another thread in which Matt states the Atomic Album will now NOT be going away. The original proposal was due to disk space and now the new server has much more space Atomic Album is staying for premium users.

Jonathan David Mon 05 Oct 2020, 9:09 pm

I have tried twice today several hours apart to sign up as a premium member again but each time the connection to Worldpay has timed out. Is the link faulty or is it a problem at the other end?
Jonathan

dforrest Mon 05 Oct 2020, 9:20 pm

Jonathan David wrote:I have tried twice today several hours apart to sign up as a premium member again but each time the connection to Worldpay has timed out. Is the link faulty or is it a problem at the other end?
Jonathan

I can't get past the "here" on "Click here to extend your subscription"!

rufuskins Mon 05 Oct 2020, 9:51 pm

I can't access the UKTS forums getting the following message:-

"Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server."

Bob Latimer Mon 05 Oct 2020, 11:20 pm

Me too.

dforrest Wed 07 Oct 2020, 12:20 pm

Is there any news on when the UKTS forums are expected to be back online?

**slipperman12** Wed 07 Oct 2020, 12:58 pm

Hi David,

Have you tried contacting UKTS?

I've just sent an email to support and will post any information I receive.

Cheers,
Ged

andrew moody Fri 09 Oct 2020, 1:03 pm

slipperman12 wrote:Hi David,

Have you tried contacting UKTS?

I've just sent an email to support and will post any information I receive.

Cheers,
Ged

I too cannot access either the forum or the CD ordering page and get the "The requested URL was not found on this server.
I have sent an emal to UKTS support and am waiting a reply!.

dforrest Fri 09 Oct 2020, 1:08 pm

The latest information from Matt on Discord (late yesterday) is "i think the forums will be back pretty soon now. testing so far is going well of the new install".

**slipperman12** Fri 09 Oct 2020, 3:06 pm

Hi David,
Thanks for the update Smile

I've still not received a response from UKTS support, but I suppose they're pretty busy!!

Cheers,
Ged

Easilyconfused Sat 10 Oct 2020, 9:04 am

The emails are not currently working. Matt is still working on the site between his day job and sleeping.

marcus1940 Sat 10 Oct 2020, 6:26 pm

I am getting the following when trying to renew my subscription !!!

"This site can’t be reached

new.atomic-systems.com refused to connect.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED "

Is this my computer or is it affecting us all?

Mike

**slipperman12** Sat 10 Oct 2020, 8:38 pm

Hi Mike,
It's affecting everybody, mate Smile

We've all got to wait a little longer (I don't know how 'little', but I'm sure the fellas are doing all they can to get it back up as soon as possible!).

Cheers,
Ged

Easilyconfused Sun 11 Oct 2020, 5:33 pm

The UKTS main site and forums are now back and HTTPS secured. If you get insecure page messages make sure you have cleared your cache and the URL is correct.

https://members.uktrainsim.com//index2.php?form_news=readreport&form_report=1930

Jonathan David Mon 19 Oct 2020, 8:28 am

Good new to report.
I have just paid my premium membership fee successfully. So others who have been waiting should be able to do the same.
Jonathan

Jonathan David Tue 20 Oct 2020, 9:27 am

Having waited a day for the payment to go through I have just made my first recent download. I received the following message from Norton:
"UKTS_40014_Hudd. . .zip cannot be downloaded securely"
I downloaded anyway, as I am sure it is just Norton being neurotic, but thought I would report it anyway. No cogent reason was given for being suspicions of the file, just a list of possible reasons. Not helpful (I told Norton so).
Jonathan

rufuskins Wed 21 Oct 2020, 7:42 am

This morning I got the same message, but in my case I use Kaspersky. My guess is that with the new workings within UKTS internet security providers "hesitate" due to a lack of history!

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